HW 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market Realizations

            Entering a restaurant that is made to serve many costumers at once at such a grim time for business is depressing. Typically when I walk into a MacDonald’s it is full of teenagers after school and there is a more blissful mode. This time as I entered the same location as usual except it was full of old people. It was a disappointment when compared to the experience of walking through the farmers market seeing all of the bright and vibrant collars of fruits and vegetables. Added to all of the lively pedestrians walking around can put a person in a completely more up beet frame of mind than the MacDonald’s. I spent most of my time at the MacDonald’s observing the menu. I noticed that they had a salad menu. It appeared that most of the costumers were not leaving with salads or the healthy alternatives featured in the menus.  This was unlike the farmers market because it seemed that you had to search to find something unhealthy. By no means am I saying that the food at the farmers market was not good because it was healthy, but in opposition to MacDonald’s there was only one table of deserts for sale. Being in a MacDonald’s wile not ordering something was a new experience. At that point I was not in the mood for oily fried food or one of there watery, soggy salads. The differed from the farmers market because wile I was roaming around the market asking questions about what all the organic farmers were growing, I was sipping on a cup of cider I had just purchased. The only true similarity between the MacDonald’s and they booth sell food.

            Is food a commodity? There is no reason why food should not be. At the farmers market both the farmers and the costumers seemed to be using food as a commodity. The farmers were using food to there advantage by benefiting from the financial commodity. One can even argue that the customers of the market were taking advantage of a nutritional commodity. After being told how low the United States life expectancy was compared to other developed nations I saw that only owners of MacDonald’s and other fast food companies are getting a commodity from the deal. If I was asked this same question before the activity or before I was told about the life expectancy of Americans I would have probably written something like, The customers at the MacDonald’s were using food as a commodity by taking advantage of the low priced food. Although I see the anti MacDonald’s point, It would be hypocritical of me to say it is what is bringing our life expectancy down because, I chose to indulge in MacDonald’s once and a while. Food can be a commodity depending on how the consumer and the seller chose to go about sale.